Tag Archive for: workstation
Windows Workstation Cracked On Last Day
Trend Micro-sponsored Pwn2Own, the annual computer hacking contest, recently concluded in Vancouver, Canada.
The three-day hacking event was held between March 22, 2023, and March 24, 2023, with prize money to be won in excess of $1,000,000 USD and two Tesla Model 3.
“For this year’s event, every round will pay full price, which means if all exploits succeed, we’ll award over $1,000,000 USD,” said Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) in a blog post.
The hacking event had multiple categories for the security researchers to target in the competition, which included automotive, enterprise applications, enterprise communications, servers, virtualization, and local escalation of privilege (EoP).
The third and last day of the Pwn2Own hacking contest saw Windows 11, Ubuntu Desktop, and the VMware Workstation virtualization software being successfully exploited by security researchers.
Ubuntu
The highlight of the day was the Ubuntu Desktop operating system whose zero-day vulnerability was exploited three times by three different teams: Kyle Zeng from ASU SEFCOM (a double free bug), Mingi Cho of Theori [a Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability], and Bien Pham (@bienpnn) of Qrious Security.
Kyle Zeng and Mingi Cho earned $30,000 and 3 Master of Pwn points each for their exploits on the Ubuntu operating system. On the other hand, Bien Pham earned only $15,000 and 1.5 Master of Pwn points for the exploit, as it was a previously known bug.
Windows 11
Thomas Imbert (@masthoon) from Synacktiv (@Synacktiv) hacked a fully patched Windows 11 system in the EoP category using a UAF bug against Microsoft Windows 11. This earned him $30,000 and 3 Master of Pwn points.
VMWare Workstation
Lastly, the STAR Labs (@starlabs_sg) team used an uninitialized variable and UAF exploit chain against VMWare Workstation for which they earned $80,000 and 8 Master of Pwn points.
Summary of Day 1 and Day 2 at the Pwn2Own Vancouver 2023
On the first day of the contest, security researchers were awarded $375,000 (and a Tesla Model 3) for demoing 12 zero-days in the Adobe Reader, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle VirtualBox, Tesla Model 3, Ubuntu Desktop, Windows 11, and Apple macOS.
Further, on the second day, total prize money…
Which Windows Internet Security Software protects you best and which slows down your workstation
Performance (Speed-Impact) Test
“Protecting the consumers’ PC against cybercrime is an important task. Weddingphotos, documents, data must be protected. Alongside internet security software doing backups and updates is essential.” – Peter Stelzhammer, co-founder AV-Comparatives
The tested products had to defend against over 750 recent and prevalent malicious programs, downloaded from the Internet and show if they slow down the Windows 10 machine. They were assigned one of four possible award categories, according to how well they performed in the test. From lowest to highest, the categories are: Tested, Standard, Advanced, and Advanced+.
The Consumer Real-World Protection Test checks each security product’s ability to protect a PC against threats originating on the Internet. The tested products can use all of their protection mechanisms, such as URL blockers, reputation services, cloud signatures and behavioural detection.
The Performance Test evaluates the impact of anti-virus software on system performance, as programs running in background – such as real time protection antivirus software – use some percentage of system resources. Taking these tests as reference, users can evaluate their anti-virus software in terms of system speed (system performance).
To ensure that the anti-malware programs do not plague the user with false alarms, a false-positives test is included in the Real-World Protection Test. This involves downloading and executing harmless program files, and browsing to harmless websites, to check if any of these are incorrectly identified as malicious. Products with above-average levels of false alarms have their award level downgraded.
The Consumer Real-World Protection Test is part of AV-Comparatives’ Main Test Series for consumer products. The Test Series also includes the Malware Protection Test and the Performance Test. The former checks the ability of antivirus products to protect against malicious files already on the system, or coming from an external drive or over the local area network. The Performance Test
About AV-Comparatives
AV-Comparatives is an independent organization offering systematic testing to check whether security software, such as…